So all we passengers need to do is keep an eye out for other passengers aiming hypodermic needles at their big breasts (or asses), and everything will be just fine. Unless you care that the authorities saw you naked. Better get used to it! This is war.

Or we could run airport security as though we were trying to make airports secure instead of maximizing passenger inconvenience so we think they're trying real hard to keep us safe. (And as a side benefit, we're all constantly reminded of who's in charge!)

Too bad the government will never recognize the reality that the best (and indeed only) real security system is the other passengers. But then how could they? In the big picture, people who solve problems without resort to government intervention, regulation, bureaucracy and taxes are a greater threat to the government than the suicide bombers.

Does anyone understand that these scanners are dangerous? I am a physician and can tell you that similar devices are used and do pose a risk of radiation exposure. Think of a woman who is pregunant and the effect it could have. Then those of us who have had radiation exposure have to put up with more so that we are subjected to eye injury, thyroid, etc. We need to tell our leaders that the enemy is Islam, not the American people.

"rhhardin said... Pork keeps a martyr out of heaven.Carrying a few pounds of pork fat on every flight might be enough.

A nice thought, but untrue actually. Enemy Islamoids on Jihadare permitted to do things ordinarily forbidden if it assists in Taqqiyah (deceiving the enemy so a deadly blow or attack may be landed).

Thus, all the reports of Islamoid bombers or 9/11 hijackers falsely befriending infidels, opening drinking alcoholic beverages, even eating pork BBQ in Florida.Nor does burying a holy martyr with pig products mean a thing....it desecrates the corpse but a martyr killed in Jihad instantly goes to Paradise - according to Islam.

--------------The whole show theater of airport security is premised on "giving the public a sense of confidence". That is why everytime an Islamoid strikes it is called "an isolated event" ; "not to worry folks, your Heroes in uniform responded perfectly and saved the day!"Security should be premised on making it difficult for enemy combatants to succeed , but telling people honestly it is impossible to completely defend against an intelligent, thinking enemy.If perfect defenses existed, we would not have taken 5K deaths and tens of thousands of casualties in the last 8 years.

Beyond defensive security, we need intelligence ops, strategic communications, and some clear talk with other nations about outmoded Geneva Conventions and what sort of reprisals would be understandable after Islamoids blow a few planes out of the sky by a technique we have no defense against...or they do a WMD attack one day.

If they were to develop an absolutely fool proof security system, wouldn't the terrorists simply move on to high speed trains or whatever....They say that the cause of the spike in car jackings was the increased effectiveness of car alarm systems. Increased security thus led to more violent crimes....Israel's defense against Arab terrorism was finally to build a wall. Perhaps there should be talk of limiting immigration from Islamic countries.

People in this country really over-react to the notion of a terrorist attack on an airplane. Now we all have to go through a naked body scanner just because some klutz sewed a bomb in his underwear. After that happened, the media acted like it was the biggest thing in history. The government could talk about nothing else. The average person was saying, "Sure I don't care if airport security letches oogle my boobies all day long, as long as it makes us safe."

If we are actually at "war" with terrorists, as some government officials like to say, we ought to expect some casualties from time to time and learn how to cope with them. We cope somehow with the fact that 43,000 people die each year in auto accidents or 17,000 get murdered.

Other countries certainly cope with terror attacks without teetering on the edge of total collapse. They clean up the mess and get on with their lives. We get hysterical and vow to fly naked if that's what it takes to keep us safe.

If you read anything about the home front during WWII you would know that Germans and Japs both attempted terror tactics. The Japs much less so as they were readily recognized and kept secure until the war was over. The Germans were likewise segregated and confined but they blended in better. The point is that the country did not go crazy and start limiting our rights in such a broad fashion. Instead, the war was taken to the Nazi and everyone was not suspected of being a Nazi. If people want to have a religion that preaches harm to others, then they need confinement and close observation. Let the rest of us alone. That is how I interpert the 4th amendment.

Steyn: "In all their alleged allegedness, this administration has an allergy to the concept of war, and thus to the tools of war, including strategy and war aims.

In essence, they've accepted a Fort Hood model for this challenge: every so often, something will happen and people will die, and we'll seal off the crime scene and take the alleged suspect into alleged custody. But it's reactive, and it cripples our ability to prevent the death of innocents."

I'm still having this one, tiny, problem with the entire law & order approach to counter-terrorism.

What level of punishment is likely to deter a suicide bomber?

I mean, we can't prosecute the bomber before he has committed the crime, because he hasn't done anything yet. And we can't prosecute him afterwards because he's dead. Anybody from the left side of this debate want to weigh in?

With Arabs making up about 1% of the US population, this wouldn't be effective even if you have no moral objection to it. There would be more false positives than true positives in trying to pick out who's "Arab." This isn't a moral issue; it's a straightforward question of probabilities. Also, not all al Qaeda style terrorists are Arab. They may all be Muslim, but they're not all Arab. And I don't know how you can reliably tell who "looks Muslim."

Isn't the real problem with profiling or being sure *not* to profile, an inhibition to security personnel going with their gut feelings, picking up on those unconscious signals and pulling someone out for an extra search; on account of the lack of *specifics* on why you pulled out yet another 20-30 year old swarthy male?

Wasn't that the problem surrounding Hassan that lead to the Ft. Hood massacre? No one wanted to have to explain why they were picking on the Muslim guy?

"I mean c'mon. 9-11 was only 3000 people. Lets not lose our heads over a few suicide airplanes."

Exactly right. In a war, people die. If we lose our head over the possibility that another underwear bomber might set himself on fire en-route to Detroit, we've already lost the war. We should punish the people who commit or conspire to commit terrorism, not the American people.

Of course the best way to prevent terrorism, is to quit doing the things abroad that make people want to kill us in the first place.

I think we could put people in bomb boxes as they go through the airport. then we could shower them with non-poisonous radiation so that if they have a bomb on them, it will blow up whether it's inside them or inside their shoes.

I'll go with that choice, since that is the choice that we already live with, right? I just want to live with that choice without having to take my shoes off at the airport and without someone pretending to make me safer while not making me safer at all.

El Pollo Real said... PETN is so chemically different from silicone or saline that screening methods should be able to distinguish them non-invasively.

That is just one possibility. The easier one is to just pack the Islamoid up internally with 3-4 kilos of high explosive like Mexicans and Columbians pack their drug mules with cocaine. You give them a drug then that stops peristalsis like the Columbians and Mexicans do and you're in business.

And even if the "Heroes" stop the Islamoid evildoers completely as an air threat with another 150-200 billion thrown at the problem....the Islamoids can move on to plenty of other soft targets in the USA sure to make the front page and dominate the mass electronic media news cycle.

Drop a bridge.Attack an elementary school and hold the kids hostage shooting 1 an hour until the Zionists release Pal prisoners or all Holders AQ buddies in civilian jails are set free.Hijack a fuel truck or use an Islamoid sleeper agent who got a hazardous material trucking job to drive it into a tunnel, set up a traffic jam, and when 600 other vehicles are stuck down it it, open the petcocks on 3,000 gallons of gasoline, shout Allah u Akbar and flick a lighter.Or dump the 3,000 gallons down a subway ventilation shaft.

The point being that any engineer can think of all sorts of undefended things in the USA guaranteed to make national news if attacked.

Defense isn't enough. You need deterrance. To have deterrance, you need to let the Muslim World know that you want friendship - but if Islamoids bring war - then all the progressive Jews in the ACLU and all the Eurolefties and campus liberals will not protect them from awful reprisal.

"Well, there's also a few things we'll have to do at home as well, such as ceasing to educate our women. Allah doesn't approve of that, according to AQ and the Taliban."

That's Bush's notion that they hate us for "our freedoms." It was absurd then and is absurd now. They hate us because we have troops all over the middle east, ships offshore, control the oil and take sides in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. If we build some nuclear power plants, develop clean coal, fund alternative energy, we can tell the middle east to go shove their oil wells where even Allah wouldn't go.

If we were actually treating it as a war, we wouldn't be allowing muslims to emigrate or travel here. We would make the USA off-limits to muslims.

Before you cry "bigot!" consider the last time we found supremacist fanatics. The Nazis come to mind. Would we have allowed emigration of Nazis or travel by Nazis to or within the country when Nazis were killing us? No.

And before you say, "but not all muslims are terrorists," let ME say: then let the "good" muslims deal with the "bad" muslims. When they have that little intra-civilizational war resolved, and Islam is no longer a threat to non-muslims, THEN we will consider treating all muslims as non-threats. Until then, since we have no way of knowing WHICH muslims are dangerous, and since we do not need muslims here, and since there is no reason we should subject all of ourselves to invasions of privacy and routine (and growing) inconveniences due to the presence of muslims here, let the muslims deal with the inconvenience caused by their fellow-religionists murdering people.

In short, no way is this being treated as a real war. More of us are apparently going to end up being killed before this delicacy about calling a muslim spade a spade ends.

That's Bush's notion that they hate us for "our freedoms." It was absurd then and is absurd now.

How do you know that's absurd?

I actually chatted with a couple of Islamic fundamentalists (long before 9/11), and the thing that infuriated them most was the global export of American culture - which they (correctly) viewed as being in direct opposition to the culture that they wanted. Maybe if Beyonce stopped making music videos...

Oh, and you're being naive if you don't think that the West is the ultimate target of Islamization. You might recall that there was an Osama bin Laden video made after 9/11, but before we invaded Afghanistan, where OBL stated 9/11 had caused a lot more interest in converting to Islam in the Netherlands. At the time I thought he was nuts (Islam? The Netherlands?), but in retrospect OBL was a lot more far-seeing than I gave him credit for.

Kevin, they may hate us for our culture (not our freedoms) but I hate parts of our culture too. Example, I watched five minutes of the Grammys tonight. After watching some singer in a green crotchless Flash Gordon outfit I was pretty disgusted too (though I wouldn't sew a bomb in my underwear so solve the problem. Instead I pressed that neat button on my remote--the ON/OFF switch.

The point is that the country did not go crazy and start limiting our rights in such a broad fashion.Except for, you know, baring people of certain ethnicities from large parts of the country, and forcibly jailing some of them. Other than that, no rights violations. Well, that and compulsory military service. And active censorship of the media and all international mail. Yep, it was a civil rights paradise.

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